A GM directly controlling what a character may or may not do is wrong, I think we can all agree:

Yes, 110%.

Big Lemon wrote:

"No, you can't take that side-strret", "No, you cannot visit the witch first and the dungeon second", etc. Many also feel that "excessive restrictions" on character options also makes a bad GM, i.e. "You cannot play a dwarf wizard because I decided dwarves can't be wizards", and the countless myriad of variations.

OK, none of these examples look bad, per se. Situational, probably. But not inherently wrong.

Big Lemon wrote:

My question, though, is: Is it acceptable for a GM to veto a decision based on the in-character reasons the player has come up with?

Only if what the player has come up with is blatantly against the world, campaign, play style, agreed rules, or else the GM and the other players have previously agreed upon.

Aka: a player has no right to wreck a game, because "that's his thing".

Big Lemon wrote:

-Is it unfair to restrict player options if the story does not warrant them? (i.e. does Story trump Rules?)

-Is PC backstory sacred and purely the domain of the player? Does the GM have a right to decide what may or may not be in the PCs backstory?
-Should the fluff not matter as long as the rules are followed?

Not unfair as long as it's common knowledge at the table.

Mostly yes. Usually a few blank spots are left floating about for the GM and the player to expand and work on as needed. If the new stuff doesn't contradict previously agreed material, no problem (Aka: a GM has no right to wreck a character because "that's his campaign").
No.

While I certainly like a more deadly, harsh and realistic style of gaming, the subjectivity and all around randomness of the early editions is not on my wishlist. In any wishlist.

I agree.

Quote:

I strongly support player characters as protagonists of the story being told and heroes of that story, but they're protagonists and heroes not thanks to some ingrained mechanic of the system, but because of their choices and their actions.
Recent editions have transformed hard-bitten heroes who struggled to earn their status into (horresco referens, a TV tropes nudge) Mary Sues who do what they do because they're built that way and have to succeed otherwise the story grinds to a halt. To hell with that.
I'd rather play other games (and I do, when house rules do not suffice).

Could you give an example. I am thinking you are confusing edition issues with GM'ing issues, but I may be misunderstanding you.

I think that my examples would only lead to a rather long winded discussion on what's an edition issue, a GMing issue and which one of them stems from the other.

It's best to paraphrase one of my regular players: "It feels like I'm playing the game just to level up time and time again: I have to plan a character instead of letting the adventures shape him, or having him survive the adventures despite shortcomings in his abilities.
And even not considering the combat encounters and that mountain of modifiers, with all this planning, skill grades, feats, prerequisites, class stuff and equipment, I feel more like an accountant on behalf of my character rather than a player".

BTW, we stuck to 3.X/PFRPG for a bit more than a decade, we came there from AD&D2e, CoC and Kult 1st ed (shudder), and we're now playing Blade of the Iron Throne and Thousand Suns. Pretty much all systems with an hefty load of things to take in consideration - OK, CoC and TS less than the others.
But with the d20 evolution of D&D we had the distinct feeling that the system itself required more attention than it was due. For its own sake, not detail, simulation, or that brain-numbing concept that is "system mastery".

And all of this rant leads to the (maybe) unexpected result: the characters are mechanically built to be heroes. They're not just fledgling adventurers with some tricks upon their sleeves (the feeling you got with earlier editions).
Once you sum up all of the modifiers, skills, feats, class features, traits, equipment, stuff, a 1st level character's leagues away from any other mortal. And it gets worse with every level.
With a game like Exalted, it would be OK. A high magic fantasy game... it still is too much. A sword and sorcery game needs to be rethinked so much it's best to play something else altogether.

And with published adventures we're still there, superheroes with no superproblems. Published adventures which I take are the baseline from the game publishers on how the system works (adventures may be good, bad, or else in any system).
There's no longer a random lethal moment (this is good), but the lethal moment is now only seen when characters are not built/equipped/developed in a path.
No longer they die because they chose the wrong option despite all the evidence. No longer they die because they take on an enemy they do know is more powerful than they are. Hey! It's not fun I die because I did something stupid.
Now they die because the accounting for the encounter bests the accounting the players did for their characters.

The last day of september, a friend of mine passed away from cancer. The illness developed mostly without symptoms, and by the time the first ones showed up, it was too late for any attempt of cure or therapy. In a short three months he wore out, leaving a sense of loss that I know no human words can properly describe.
We knew each other since 25 years ago - a veritable lifetime of friendship - and he's been a regular player at my table ever since, every friday night. He was a great chess player, a good connoisseur of fine music, a passable guitar and piano player, a cinema enthusiast, and a superb writer. Way better than professionals.

A couple weeks later I found myself in possession of one manuscript he wrote about 20 years ago, a typewrited 100-pages long adventure. It's a murder mistery based investigation for Call of Cthulhu (our RPG of choice back in the days), that in the text frequently addresses me directly as the GM (Keeper, in the game) to make adjustements or to cover blank elements, as I'd deem most appropriate. Very few cosmic horrors, and a lot of old fashioned hardboiled detective action, Philip Marlowe style; maybe even more akin to the older Fu Manchu novels.
After a feverish reading and a lot of nighttime crying, fueled by copious amounts of single malt, I decided to give the original text to his beloved wife, as a keepsake of his uncanny knack for writing and as a tangible explanation of how I got to know him.
Then I asked her the permission to actually complete the adventure, filling in the blank spots, adjusting the design elements he was not so sure of, and double-checking the game stats. To have it published in print, even if just in a small private run. We cried a lot more.

It's the only thing I can imagine that could give a semblance of... logic, maybe, to what has happened. Again, words fail me.
It may not be the greatest adventure ever, it sure is not a novel or even a novella, but to me it's the greatest legacy I could ever think of. He gave me his idea.

So, now I find myself re-writing the text (I will NOT allow an OCR software lay its soulless gaze on it), making annotations, checking rules and resources, changing bits and adjusting where necessary - the least possible. The prospect of changing too much, or deviating from his original concept is absolutely terrifying to me.
Sometimes, while I'm typing at the keyboard, I feel like he's right beside me. And I cry a lot.

Being one of the original... patrons (before being a backer became commonplace) of Sinister Adventures timeframe, and having not folded my pledge, I can't praise enough Louis, Nick, Rich, all the awesome guys who contributed to the effort, and the fine people at Frog God games that made this possible.

Cheliax only has a Companion AFAIK, not really a book (just like Andoran, Taldor, Qadira, and until a few weeks a go, Osirion).
It deserves a proper Setting book, given its major role in the history, politics, and action of the Inner Sea.

Perhaps a little devil's advocate, but I sure would be angry if my GM saved classes for special snowflake NPCs and denied them to his PCs. The players are supposed to be the heroes, not the supporting cast.

While I absolutely agree, I also feel compelled to say that they're the heroes because of what they do, not (only) because of what they are.

Important NPCs must be special as much as the playing characters, even exotic or exceedingly rare, and even moreso due to their limited playing time in a show focused on the PCs.

Players requesting to have "all the options" to perform as protagonists is not a valid argument - at least in my book.
Players requesting to shine as protagonists more than NPCs in a given story is perfectly reasonable.

Short story, the group charged into melee, crashing headlong into an orc multi-tribal horde.
After a couple of rounds of cleaving and arcane blasting, the warchiefs shouted orders, and the first line of orcs started foaming at the mouth. Then they went in, oblivious of losses, grabbed the wizard and the bard (easiest grapple victims), and brought them away.
The group panicked.
A few hundred yards away, orc shamans started bringing up crude contraptions to ritually slaughter victims on the battlefield, to appease the orcish gods.
The group panicked some more.

The rest of the party went through a lot of hurt, while trying to get their comrades back to safety, harassed by lowly troops and slowed by the occasional elite enemy (orc warchiefs, ogres, an handful of giants), and ran for their lives as soon as possible.

Back at their base camp, they also suffered the indignity of an army officer berating them for risking their lives of most capable warriors and spellcasters just for a few dozen orcs.

tl;dr: split the party. Wreck their strategy.
No battleplan survives contact with the enemy, neither should a lousy one such as six people against a whole army in an open field.

As far as user interfaces are involved, unifying the desktop and mobile environment is simply stupid. I'm not using my CAD the same way I'm fiddling with my tablet, get over it once and for all.
Head of departments may disagree, but that's because they know jack$#!& about drawing with CAD software for hours on. Try doing that on a mobile touchscreen device, you monkey.

More recent systems, The One Ring (set 5 years after the Battle of Five Armies) which deals a lot with travelling and social interactions with the people of the Middle Earth; and A song of Ice and Fire RPG, which has a robust social interaction system and an equally developed domain management part.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Ed. (with the Lure of Power supplement) can be easily used for a political/social campaign in which physical combat is the least frequent option.

Also, Thousand Suns is a good sci-fi game that has combat not in the forefront, and I seem to recall that Rogue Trader features an interesting commercial focus, with a great concept of managing your own space vessel and its crew.

A lot of Cortex based games, like Leverage, also do not have combat as the main element of the game.

I'd like to see bigger tiles, like the ones produced by Rakham for its Cadwallon/Confrontation lines (they were called something like "reversible hybrid tiles"), massive 12" x 12" laminated card tiles.
As they were really modular, it was easy to assemble a few of them to build a sprawling city harbor/slum/noble quarter, a forest area, a sewer complex, and even some cave system or dungeon area. Kinda like geomorphs.

But they would also heavily interfere with flip mats and map packs, which I understand is not a good idea.

It is sad news, but the sadness started for me back when they went web only. It makes me very curious as to what D&DNext, the edition made to unite all the divided gamers out there, is even going to have for regular, accessible support.

RPGs have always been a niche hobby, and times have certainly moved on from the eighties, but I don't think WotC/Hasbro really gets how much having a monthly magazine with awesome van-art on the cover every month popularized the hobby.

It's 2013. Paper is dead. The concept of a periodical publication is dead outside of academia, and even there its days are numbered. Video game magazines are folding, specialized publications are barely making it through every month, Kobold Quarterly died a sad death after a valiant attempt to become Dragon Reloaded. People don't learn about cool hobbies from periodical stands anymore, they learn about them from social media and blogs.

I like my dinosaur way: evolution slow and steady, maybe with a couple too much dead branches, but sparking inspiration even at wrong turns.

These new social mammalians mutate too fast, even discarding choices before having effectively perused them.

I play with only core rulebook and (most part of the) advanced players guide allowed. None of the latest hardcovers have survived the vetoing process - neither the companions.
I think that the archetype and trait system is way too abused, along the same path of the 3.X era PRCs.

I play in what I call Golarion 1.0, the one from the old harcover, with paladins of Asmodeus, conflicting references, a lot less deities, and what the developers have called "the rough edges". I like the pulp-era style it has compared the the sterilized feel of the new HC.

I prefer the 3.5 era AP compared to the PFRPG ones. Reading the latter gave me the feeling of a sanitized version of the originals, without the blood stains, the gritty scenes, and... the real danger. The one that does not only kill your PC, but it scares the living $#!£ out the player too.

I think that the WBL tables are seriously messed up and should be scrapped altogether.

As one of the original pre-orderers (?) all the way back to Sinister times, I'd like to thank Lou, Bill, Greg, Tim, Richard, Adam, Frank and everyone involved in bringing this bloodthirsty tome back from the depths of the ocean.

It will now stand proudly beside other glorious hardcovers, such as Ptolus, The Shackled City, Rise of the Runelords, and Trouble at Durbenford.

Also, why the hate on opposed attack roles? I mean, I get that they add one more roll to combat, but, oh god, 5 whole seconds, what a gamebreaker. I suppose I stole the idea from a system that doesn't use damage rolls, so combat was sped up somewhat compared to standard PF combat, but that secondary randomness being added into the mix sounds enjoyable enough for me to deal with an extra roll.

The problem doesn't come from the opposed roll (as in the time it takes to roll the dice), but rather it stems from the time it takes to compute all the necessary modifiers to the opposed rolls themselves.

Opposed checks without the whole "system mastery" (spell buff, piece of equipment, feat, situational modifier, class feature, racial ability, etc.) math apparatus of the d20 system is great.
Right now, the opposed check brings along such a train of luggage that becomes unwieldy even at lower levels, and completely nightmarish from 10th level up.

I strongly support more articulated defensive maneuvers, but the current AC+HP concepts and d20 roll+pile of modifiers does not help at all implementing anything different from a roll vs a static number - and that comes before class based, leveled defense bonus and armor as DR plus a Vitality/Wounds system.

I find the idea of a 20th level fighter (or any class character, for that matter) being dealt damage by a commoner with a pointy stick being excellent, if not positively desirable.

The idea of a 20th level fighter (or any combat oriented class) being hit by a commoner with a pointy stick is another matter.
Also, the fact that a character improves his/her attack ability but not his/her defensive attitute after being wounded a hundred thousand times is really... funny.

However the HPs value is a catch-it all number that defines stamina, phisical wounds, determination, will to survive, fatigue and other stuff - at least for PCs: for adversaries it's just the sustainable damage amount. Sucks to be them.
At the same time, the AC value is another catch-it-all number that includes, dodging, weaving, blocking, parrying, feinting, armor damage soaking capacity, and other stuff too, that you just can't do as an active response maneuvre, but add as a flat modifier to a static number. Yayyyyy.

Game balance and playability moreover desires that attack succeeds a little bit better than defence, and that a combat exchange goes as fast and smooth as possible. Other game systems have a way more complex and slow procedure, as in "I choose my combat stance, my opponent does the same, them I roll for attack with modifiers for conflicting stances, my opponent rolls for defense with different modifiers for the same two conflicting stances of before, then I roll for damage, subtract the armor soaking value, change my opponent vitality points and add yet another modifier to combat due to sustained damage, stress and fatigue. OK, roll again for initiative, you're facing the third goblin now".

So, unless you rework from the ground up the whole system, lots of HPs, high attack vs not so high defense, roll vs static number, they all stay right there.

Alchemist, Magus, Oracle and Cavalier - I like. Fantasy traditions since a very long time.

Inquisitor, Witch and Summoner - not my cup of tea, but I can't really find anything completely wrong in them (Summoners are really advanced classes though, with a lot of pitfalls). Sometimes they overshine other classes, sometimes they don't.

Samurai, Ninja and Gunslinger - not at my table. Unless I've developed a campaign that makes them fitting.

Right now, too many racial options, archetypes, feats, traits (I've come to despise them with the strenght of a thousand fiery suns), silly races and spells, the option bloat already seen in the 3.X era. And the inevitable race to combos and bonus stacking.

But I'm still the DM and my veto is strong as ever, so the hassle is listing what's good and what's not. "I don't care, there are no dwarf-adopted feline humanoid gunslingers in my fantasy world. And there will never be".

In a world where people can make pacts with demons or dodge 20-foot-radius fireballs, I don't think it's weird for a person to be able to retrain a now-obsolete feat, archetype, or even a class level.

I love hearing a Dev saying this, especially when it comes from you :-)

Thank you!

Not being able to retrain feats is probably one of the main reasons I don’t like playing some of classes such as ranger and fighter (even though fighters can retrain some feats). Cleave is great at some levels but one of those feats that you might want to swap. And what if you pick a feat chain and the regret it?

This deserves an explanation. Mind that's a very personal explanation, so take it with a grain of salt and all the rest.

I come from an early era of RPGs, both PnP and CRPGs. Feats, skill points, retraining was something done only with command line cheats or third party "trainer" softwares (for videogames) or not at all (for tabletop RPGs).
Perhaps this has stuck as an unfair move. Don't know.

Moreover, I developed a simultaneous interest in tabletop wargames. The ones with a hex map full of symbols and two or three colors (not the fancy hand painted maps or high-definition renders), and small cardboard counters - games that actively tried to fry your brain, like Breakout Normandy.
In those games, an often explitly stated rule was that any counter moved during your turn coudn't be taken back later if you changed your mind - even if it was still your turn and you hadn't finished making movements/choices. That simulated the tactical mistakes made by HQ during a battle.

Choosing a feat (or devoting a bunch of skill points for Use Rope) is choosing a strategy. You may make mistakes. You survive and live with your mistakes. These are things that define your character as much (or sometimes, more) as your optimal choices.
You have fun playing a character that's succefull despite not having the optimal feat at the optimal level range.

You know why they call it theat? Metric system. They don't know what a quarter pound is.

Plus they all got fish heads.

The path of the sorcerous hybrid man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the pious and the tyranny of religious men. Blessed is he who, in the name of Yog-Sothoth, herds the weak to the abbatoir, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the eater of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and curses in Aklo those who would attempt to thwart me and my invisible brother. And you will know My name is the Gate Opener when I lay My vengeance upon thee.

I'm running a Darkmoon Vale campaign for a large group (8 players) and I had to figure out some fill-ins for extra XP. Some of them are from older 3.X stuff, but really easy to convert, even on the fly.
So, here's the run-down of the adventures:

- Hollow (Tales of the Old Margreve); to bring the party upward in XP count.
- Hollow's Last Hope (less the fungus thing); to reach level 2.
- Crown of the Kobold King (no changes); enough to reach level 3.
- Wingclipper's Revenge (Dungeon Magazine #132); halfway to level 5. Feys at war.
- Challenge of the Fang (Tales of the Old Margreve); up to level 5. Werewolves and tradition.
- Revenge of the Kobold King (no changes); enough to reach level 5.
- Hungry are the Dead (no changes); to reach level 6.
- Gall of the Spider Crone (Tales of the Old Margreve); a little short of level 7. Again, tradition.
- Blood of the Gorgon (from Open Design, I was a patron); enough to reach level 8. A big "whodunit" urban adventure, which I set in Olfden.

I also plannes some different "roads" based on PCs choice; you can substitute Revenge of the Kobold King and Hungry are the Dead with Tower of the Last Baron and Treasure of Chimera Cove. Moreover it's possible to substitute Wingclipper's Revenge and Challenge of the Fang with The Automatic Hound (Dungeon Magazine #148) and Carnival of Fear.
Each different path gives a specific vibe to the campaign, a result I'm pretty satisfied with.

Environment themed modules, where the location plays a significant role, not just in the "Ok you're in a swamp, here's two encounters with swamp monsters, and... we're done, you arrived to the dungeon".
Sort of River into Darkness on steroids.
Swamps, mountains, deserts, rivers, forests, etc. Face the great outdoors and its denizens, not just the denizens in the relevant outdoors.

Also different themes. Intrigue more than combat. A dungeon made of logical puzzles and traps (remember the old Challenge of Champions adventures in Dungeon Magazine?). War, both large field battles and guerrilla style, against a capable enemy.

Areas left untouched by sourcebooks and APs, such as the Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Nirmathas, Druma, Geb...

Arctic explorer time - ship sails north, ice pack expands and engulfs the ship. let's see how the crew and characters do without beasts of burden crossing the North Pole ...

Charlie Bell wrote:

"Sure! A sailing ship costs 10,000 gp. Oh, you don't HAVE 10,000 gp? Well you probably wouldn't be able to afford to pay the crew and buy provisions, then, either..."

While these are really good advice and I'd actually stick with them, if you are not too hard pressed with time and prep resources, following the player's lead for a nautical voyage shoudn't be too difficult.

In Karlsgard, the PCs should recruit a captain and his ship instead of a landbound guide. Sandru should stick around nonetheless, as the merchant liaison once in Minkai (and even more being a close friend of Ameiko in such an NPC heavy campaign). It shouldn't pose too much of a challenge to fit this theme instead of the standard one of fitting a landlocked caravan.

Book 3 is more of an issue, but not too much. Remember they're travelling in the off season. Spoilers ahead.

Spoiler:

Instead of following the Path of Aganhei, the ship would travel along the Route of (you name it).

Katiyana is a half-fiend nereid living in a forgotten Azlant northern outpost, and issuing forth blizzard and floating archipelagos of hull-smashing icebergs. She plays a secondary role, maybe only seen from the distance.

Iqaliat is a fishing village, and the relevant encounters are pretty much the same. The white dragon however is the one from Frost Giants of the Icy Heart, which become the harassing enemies shadowing the PC's ship all the way to the coast of Minkai, until they catch up and in a climatic showdown crash their iceberg and the merchant ship on the ice pack.

The PCs must go on by land, without proper equipment other than the one salvaged from the wreck (and with Sandru giving them a hefty headache for not having opted for the safer Path of Aganhei), persecuted by the last remnants of the frost giant pirates, until they're forced in the yeti's dungeon. Remove the ghost of Katyana and use another nasty frost monster.

More adjustements will be needed apart from this rough outlines. Most of all, you have to change a lot of the random and named encounters, adapting them for a sea voyage.

However this way you'll have a relatively satisfied player and a not overly changed AP segment. With all the troubles undergone for having chosen the sea path instead of the land path (possibily safer, who knows?), his future requests will fall on the unsimpathetic ears of the NPCs and maybe even of the other players.
"We've gone your way once and travelled knee deep in the frozen s**t, now be quiet."

At low levels the 64 page format will allow for a greater scope (as in spanning multiple levels) and background/setting stuff, while at higher levels the extra pages are so much useful for the sorely needed extra informations about NPCs, creatures, tactics, custom magic items/spells and whatnots.

I'd want to run a campaign that deals with civil strife in Taldor (perhaps a bid by Princess Eutropia to take her father's throne after his assassination) leading Qadira to initiate hostilities again, causing chaos when the leadership of that nations branch of the church of Sarenae suddenly lose their powers and attempt to hide it by turning to someone or something... Else.

Did that, even though the campaign focused on other things and the political machination of Princess Eutropia and the social-religious strife of southern Taldor (and the heavy handed skirmishes along the Qadiran border) were limited to a "setting" role. Not really only scenographic elements, but surely not the primary engines of the campaign.

The princess allowed a Qadiran mercenary force to cross the border, using political influence to remove key officers and troops from the army, to fuel a schism in the Lion Blades and have free action for her own undercover agents in a forthcoming popular uprising, engineered by the BBEG - whom the Princess knew was scheming against the whole nation. A double-layered betrayal to weaken opponents and gain further influence, without revealing her role.

I ran the campaign with the pre-Inner Sea Guide setting - which I call "Golarion untamed" - and pictured Taldor as a Victorian influenced Byzantium Empire. My players were not simpathetic at first, but the layered conflict (social, political, military, religious, and obviously the innumerable individual ambitions) grew on them.

As a DM, I've had PCs acting without their direct control a couple of times myself.

Once, a particularly careless rogue was possessed by the ghost of a murderer (Chopper, from the RotRL AP) after two botched saves, and in his sleep wandered around causing minor harm and making ominous offers to a certain demonic patron. The player knew something serious was going on due to tiredness he suffered each day, the various hints left around, tracks leading to the rocky isle, etc.
The situation was solved by the group as a whole, and overall it was received as a good narrative trick.

However I never acted directly in place of the player (everything was done "off-screen", so to speak), neither I made actions that were against the character motivations or the group balance/spirit.
It was something that made me quite nervous too, but I gambled on the relative conditions of the possession (the ghost was very limited in its abilities, acted in a disorganized manner, and its influence was limited to the Sandpoint environs).

Blatantly playing against the PC's habits/intentions and causing unrest in the gaming group however made me quite upset - even more so as I was the unwilling target of such behaviour. And that's a fair understatement.
I'll try to talk to the DM, but I'm not relly enthusiast about playing again at his table.

My question is exactly how much of the event of Earthfall is known to historians, not common knowledge but to actual historians who dedicate massive time and resources, such as the man stated above? most of the things i have read on the matter are clearly for GM use. I would hate to spoil a later adventure paths by giving away "unknown" portions of information locked away in some hidden ancient library or similar. I would really like to avoid ruining surprises for my players if they play in other AP's with other Gm's.

Historians would probably know tidbits, and be biased into factions supporting wildly different theories.

While obvious effects on geography and human culture are... well, obvious (even though the details about Azlant and Thassilon are lost in the myth) some other factors are debated or completely unknown. Why and exactly how the elves disappered just before, how and when it influenced the dwarves' Quest for the Sky, etc.

Maybe some fringe scholars may even propose the theory that orcs have been brought over by the falling comet - they were living underground before being driven on the surface by dwarves.
Probably the scattered few that think that the whole event was somehow engineered are considered quite a bit off the wall - and pretty much no-one knows who was the engineer.

You can easily add or subtract whatever you want without going against Golarion canon: it's by large still a mistery for the people of Golarion, learned or otherwise.